My extended family nostalgia appears spontaneously as soon as I set foot in Hong Kong. When I was a little boy, a man named Harry Woo often watched me for my parents at our family restaurant at 2601 West Sixth Street in Los Angeles. Harry was their loyal dishwasher and short order cook. On what has, over time, become for me a fateful Saturday afternoon in the 1960s, he showed me a letter he was writing to his family in Hong Kong with his Cantonese calligraphy.

I’ve never recovered from that moment. Harry’s letter to his parents in Hong Kong written in Cantonese taught me the world was a bigger place than I’d ever imagined.

REDCAT in Walt Disney Concert Hall is the new home of the LA International New Music Festival.

I love studying scores early in the morning. Maybe it’s because I was born around 8:20 A.M. – some say that’s a good indication of a morning person. Those early hours are undistracted and quiet for learning chords, orchestration, voicings, tempi, interpretation, making all the new details familiar like old friends.

My rule of thumb is to go to sleep each night truly putting the day’s work away. If I can remember everything clearly when I wake up the next morning, I’ve learned just a bit more for the coming performances and then know what to repeat and when to move forward. That makes the next early morning so important for my work habit. And I knew today I’m ready for our LA International New Music Festival starting at REDCAT next week on Tuesday July 7 at 8:30 P.M., with a pre-concert talk at 8 P.M.

Because this morning I got a visitor telling me that just the right energy is coming out of my study!

I want my first post of the new year to begin with a big thank you to the over 2,000 readers in 62 countries who follow my Los Angeles International New Music Festival blog. From Saudi Arabia to Hong Kong, Mexico to Vietnam, South Africa to India, I’m encouraged by your interest and promise to keep the posts coming on a regular basis.

As promised in my last blog, I’m going to describe the day autumn arrived in Hong Kong this fall as Jan and I ventured into a full day in Hong Kong Park.

Trying to describe Hong Kong is like writing an encyclopedia – you’re going to need a lot of pages to cover all the subjects and possibilities. My marriage is a combination of Hollywood and Broadway: I’m from Los Angeles, California and my wife Jan is from Newark, New Jersey. Which means she spent all her teenage weekends in the Big Apple, as in attending the first Earth Day. Grandma took her to Radio City Music Hall with, of course, white gloves. She still has family in Brooklyn. I used to wait in the parking lot of 20th Century Fox with my uncle for my mom to get off work. Between the two of us, we know the two largest cities in the U.S. from childhood.

Each major city holds a lifetime of experience. I don’t think you’d get tired of any of them. Worn down by traffic and congestion, sure. But tired? Not me. Big cities equal endless opportunity. And just crossing from Kowloon to Hong Kong on the Star Ferry is the single greatest commute on Planet Earth.

Maybe it’s because my wife’s family is from Western Massachusetts. Perhaps it’s good luck or a gravitational pull that is mysterious and karmic. But we’ve now been pulled three times to Asia in the autumn. Be it China, Taiwan or Hong Kong, it’s a mirror image of my wife’s New England fascination with changing light and color this time of year. And now with the last final days of autumn leading into winter, we’ve arrived at the month of Wintersweet Tea.

I’ve started writing this post the day after Thanksgiving here in the U.S. I’m so gratified that over 50 countries have followed my blog in its first three months. Holidays are good moments to rest and reflect. After an energetic trip to Hanoi, Luang Prabang and Hong Kong married to a trip to the Latin Grammy Awards in Las Vegas last week, the combination of Thanksgiving with Hanukkah – Thanksgivakkuh – has put me in a mood to unwind.

And there is no better way to do that than with a slow gong-fu (read complicated) tea ceremony…